Really?He wouldn’t? Seemed like a perfect way to deal with this to me.
“I’ll die the wayIwant to die—and that’s by killing them first. Howyoudie is up to you.”
Louisa whimpered and shifted. Resi twisted her arms back violently, wringing out another stifled cry. She was as sick of being used as a bargaining chip as I was of watching herbeused.
Resi was Max’s monster to handle. Iknewthat. And I trusted that Max knew what he was doing. But it was Louisa’s voice that had let meoutof that box. Andsheneededme. It was time for another plan. If only my entire body and brain weren’t as much rubble as the mine now was.
“You aren’t this person, Resi,” Max said.
I almost laughed.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m exactly this person. And so areyou. We’re the children of a monster. The only difference is that Iknowwhat I am, and you’ve been running from it your whole life. Well, surprise!” She threw one hand up in demented glee. “Look where we both ended up! And the saddest part is that you had achance. You hadmillions. You had everything you neededto give this whole fucked-up world exactly what it deserves. But instead, you thought you couldsaveit, like the stupid, pathetic, naive bastard you always were.”
“Someone had to,” Max said quietly. “Someone had totry. Look, contrary to popular belief, I’m not so arrogant as to think I know what the meaning of life is. But I do know there has to be more to it than just fucking over everybody who fuckedyou. Because if it is, we’llallbe slaves for the rest of our lives.” He exchanged glances with me. “Whether we started that way or not.”
“Didheteach you that? Didsheteach you that?”
“No,” Max said. “You did.”
His voice was calm, eerily so, as he stepped toward Resi and Louisa. “When we played outside in the evenings. After chores. After homework. You would start running,” he said, breathing deep. “Out into the desert, as far as your legs could carry you, your hair flowing behind, until it just blended in with the sand. And every time, I chased you. I’d scream at you, beg you over and over again to stop. That he’d track you down no matter how far you got. That you’d just make it worse for yourself. And I was right. He always did. And then he’d makemewatch him punish you. As if it were my fault. Which in a way I guess it was.” He swallowed thickly. “Because I couldn’t stop you.”
“So you talked,” Resi said quietly, voice echoing oddly in a space now utterly silent except for the beating of our hearts.
I tried again to catch Louisa’s eye, but it was like she wasn’t even aware of me.Why?
“I talked,” Max continued. “I figured if he wouldn’t let me leave, the least I could do was talk you through it so you could hear my voice. So you could have something to listen to that wasn’t—that wasn’t—anyway.” He coughed. “He muzzled me next time because no son of his could be allowed to talk to aslave girl like that. Like she was anything more than a hole to be fucked.”
Resi’s expression twisted minutely. Because if she was skilled at anything, it was tricking you into thinking she could stop being a monster if you just pressed her buttons right.
Don’t fall for it, Max.
The silence shattered. A low rumble from deep within the mine. Dust rained down; the ground beneath us shifted. Louisa whimpered again.What the fuck was that?We might be dead sooner than evenIthought.
Enough of this.I slid into a slight crouch, muscles screaming in protest. Resi didn’t even turn. She hadn’t looked at me once, in fact. From where I stood in darkness, with the angle of the one light shining up from the ground, she couldn’t even see me.
Perfect. I could use that.
“But I still talked,” Max continued. “Even if you couldn’t hear my voice.”
“I didn’taskyou for that, Max.” Resi seethed, her nails digging into Louisa’s neck like she was some kind of living stress ball. “I didn’tfucking askfor some idiot boy to make me into something different than what I was. Than what IknewI was.”
“I know you didn’t. I did it because Iwantedto do it. Because I love you. I love you as my sister, and I loved you evenbeforethat. It’s why I gave you everything. And I would have given you more, so much more. I would have given you my entire fortune if you’d only asked. I would have fucking bankrupted myself just to take away one single second of your pain, and I—Fuck,Schatzi, why was it not enough? Why was—” He stopped, on the edge of some emotion so large and terrible he couldn’t voice it.
“Anything, huh?” Resi demanded. “What abouther?” She grabbed one of Louisa’s damp, dusty curls and yanked her farther into the light. “Would you give me her? Would you give mehim? Would you let me torture them to death, slowly andpainfully, if that were the only thing in the world that would make me happy?”
Max shook his head. “That wouldn’t make you happy,Schatzi.”
“Of course it wouldn’t. But who cares?” Resi screeched. “As you keep telling me, we’re all going to die anyway!”
“We’re not.” I forced myself to hold her gaze. “We can walk out of here together. It’s not too late.”
She raised the knife. “Yes, it?—”
I didn’t let her finish. Pushing off with my good leg—goodbeing a laughable term at this point—I lunged, straight at Louisa, knocking her out of Resi’s grasp. One short, sharp cry escaped her lips as we tumbled down together. She rolled away with whatever strength she had left, swallowed up by the darkness.
But Resi had strength and speed too. And I had nothing.
“I didn’t want it to be you first,” she whispered. Her knife plunged toward my throat—an artery.
